Finding Out Who's Coming

I recently got engaged and we've decided we're having a Mexico wedding in November 2016. I'm told you can't book anything until a year before your trip so I have a while. I'm wondering how everyone went about finding out how many people were going to come to their destination wedding since you want to know for when you go see the travel agent and that is before you send out invitations or save the dates. Did you message or call everyone to ask or did anyone make a Facebook group early to figure that out? Thanks in advance! Any info helps

We were able to get prices in September 2014 for our wedding in January 2016. I'm not sure if you're from Canada but my TA was able to get package (air and hotel) prices from both Sunwing and air Transat. We knew roughly how many would be attending since we've always known that we would be having a destination wedding. Like @calgarybride2015 said, you don't necessarily need numbers ahead of time, unless of course you have a certain budget.

We made a rough list of people we wanted to invite. Things got a bit out of hand in the end, people who we thought there was no way they'd come ended up booking, there's usually more friends than you think, etc haha, so our final list ended up bigger than we had estimated before, just keep that in mind. When we first started planning we said "oh yeah, we should have 30 people tops" now it turns out if all the maybes say yes we'll have close to 50

We run it by everyone first to kind of feel the waters a bit before booking anything. Most liked the idea and were willing to go. Mind you, this worked out for us and most of the people that said they'd come are actually coming, but it doesn't work out like that for everyone. Then we picked a resort based on the rough number of people we were expecting and then sent out invites, people booked their trips and now we are just waiting on a few, but otherwise our number is almost finalized .

We got prices in June 2014 for our August 2015 wedding . Depending on the travel agent you work with, sometimes they can get you prices sooner, especially if they have a good relationship with the hotel you're working with.

Truly, there's no way to know exactly who is going to go until they're booked. Just like the other ladies have said, some people who said multiple times that they were "definitely" going ended up not booking, and some people who I thought were total long shots have their trip fully paid for already! For me that has meant leaving the number-specific planning until closer to the wedding (4 months from today, I just realized!) because by now I think pretty much everyone who will be there is already booked. Your wedding is still a ways away and I'm sure you want to get a jump on things, but I would just organize what you can now and worry about favors, seating charts, and other things you need names and numbers for for when people are able to book and you can get a better sense of who's really going.

Congrats on your engagement, AliciaW and welcome to the forum!!! as you've already seen, there are lots of great ideas, suggestions and support here from all your fellow wedding couples - great resource for planning decisions